Code for Tulsa has been working hard this year on building relationships: both with departments in City Hall, and with other civic-minded groups that have an interest in making Tulsa better.  We’re very happy to announce that Code for Tulsa has become a member organization of Smart Growth Tulsa, a coalition that is working for the city to embrace intelligent land-use and transportation policy. As stated on their website:

Smart Growth is about efficiency. It’s about making our cities more livable, sustainable and economically viable.

Those are ideas we can get behind.  What does public policy have to do with civic tech?  We think that the two go hand in hand:  Civic tech has a role in making local government more accessible, in every sense of the word.  Government works best when citizens are actively engaged in determining their own future — with the best data, and the best tools for collaboration.  In the book Beyond Transparency, you can read about some examples of how these two worlds fit very nicely together.

It’s at the local level that government most directly impacts the lives of residents—providing clean parks, fighting crime, or issuing permits to open a new business. This is where there is the biggest opportunity to use open data to reimagine the relationship between citizens and government.

We look forward to taking our ideas further, and working more closely with organizations that are moving the city forward to better citizen engagement and a better future for Tulsa.